TURNBULL: Whoever is elected we respect the people's choice

THE MAN most likely to be Australia's next Prime Minister says we need to respect the choice voters have put forward.

In a press conference in Sydney this afternoon Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull and National's leader Barnaby Joyce fronted the cameras.

Mr Turnbull was keen to switch the nation's focus away from the results of the recent ballot and made a gallant effort to focus attention onto the infamous texts which it now appears emanated from the Queensland Labor Party on election day.

The texts to be purported from Medicare and told voters the LNP intended to privatize the public health fund.

However, in a surprise move. Mr Turnbull said he and the Coalition had to accept some responsibility for the scare campaign.

"We have to do more to re-affirm the faith of the Australian people in our commitment to health and to Medicare," he said.

"Now, that commitment is there, but plainly there were concerns.

"Now, there are other issues relating to general distrust or sense of disenfranchisement from government.

"We will work harder, much harder, to again ensure that Australians understand our very deep commitment to them.

"Politics is, after all, despite what we sometimes read, is not about the personalities of politics, not about Barnaby and me, not about the media, it's about 4 million Australians.

"It's about their dreams, their aspirations, their families, their sense of security, their anxieties about the future, about government services, whether they can keep their job, whether they will get a better job and so forth."

"This was not - you know, if somebody decided to vote Labor rather than Liberal because they didn't like, you know, business tax cuts, fair enough," Mr Turnbull said.

"That was absolutely clear. We had a policy to do that.

"Labor did not. If someone voted Labor because they thought we should increase capital gains tax by 50%, fair enough.

"That was Labor's policy, it wasn't ours. But we have to recognise that there is a real issue for us if people voted Labor because they genuinely believed or they feared that we were not committed to Medicare."

Mr Turnbull was then asked about using federal funds to invest in the Arrium Steel plant in Whyalla. Nick Xenophon has said more funding to prop up the plant would be a requisite for securing his support.

"What we committed to do if re-elected was to provide the receivers with a concessional loan to acquire that plant and as soon as we form or government again, as we expect to do, we will do that," Mr Turnbull said.

He then went on to say Queensland was responsible for Pauline Hanson's election to the Senate.

"The reason that Pauline Hanson is elected to the Senate is because a large number of Queenslanders voted for her," Mr Turnbull said.

"That's the reason she's elected to the Senate.

"The quota is obviously less, around half. If you have a double dissolution election.

"The reason we had a double dissolution election was not related to the composition of the Senate, it is the only way we could get the passage of the Australian Building and Construction Commission legislation and the registered organisation legislation."